Russian love

During one of my first trips, in Tver Region in 2007, I met Misha on my way from one village to another. He told me he had a wife and children sleeping at home. When we arrived, it turned out that although he has been living with a woman for a couple of years, they didn't have any children. I was bewildered by this lie that betrayed his dream of the unattained family happiness. I came to visit them in their almost-abandoned village a couple of more times and, once, having entered the house, I found them fully naked. They were sitting on the bed, holding their hands, and were bathed in the light. This scene came as a complete surprise, and was so magnetic and repulsive at the same time, that I was petrified for a while, and then left the room without taking a single picture. This was the last time I saw them. When I came back the next day, Misha's father told me they were not at home.

This memory of them is the one I kept. The memory that replaced the non-existing photograph that I hadn't taken and, in a way, it has become a photograph in my head.

Since that time I caught these moments of sudden tenderness and passion holding my breath. Even though at times they were showing off or playing in front of my camera in a drunken haze, these moments have always been the strongest ones — the moments of non-solitude amidst the surrounding chaos and despair, capable of outshining everything around even for a short while, or, at least, letting them forget all the rest.

Then, it seemed, everything got quiet, the time slowed down or ceased to run, and in this calm one could feel the movement of air.

Alexandra Demenkova 2025